He moved onto more recent acts, slim-hipped and breastless women with curly brown hair and hyper-aggressive technique, women who were better axe-men than he, who shouted like bluesmen and rained down upon him the redemptive fires of slide and the snapping percuss of bass strings.

There were the well-cut, custom-made dresses she wore when she and my father lived in Paris in the late fifties and early sixties, the modern white slacks and black tops she carried off with slim-hipped aplomb as a young mother in Washington, and the well-cut blue jeans and brightly colored cotton jackets she wore so youthfully in her fifties and sixties that made her look stylish and unique.

Now that she's learned a bit of Spanish, the slim-hipped waif, whose claim to a Hispanic heritage has been mocked, turned saucy Latina for the occasion, sporting darker eyebrows and a rose in her now curly hair.